Sooner or later, Republicans in the Mississippi Legislature are going to get down to the business of reshaping the way the state collects its taxes and spends its money.
Skillful election campaigns, not to mention adept recruiting that has convinced a number of Democratic lawmakers to switch parties, have given the GOP strong control of the mechanisms of state government.
The impulse surely is there for a radical reshaping of the state’s finances. Republicans generally believe in less government, which is fine. Hopefully they will be able to take steps toward that goal without causing serious damage to important programs. Mississippi Republicans have two convenient places to look for examples of overzealous restructuring that brought on unintended consequences.
The first place is right next door in Louisiana. Gov Bobby Jindal, with an eye on the presidency, was so determined to avoid tax increases that he became a lousy steward of state finances. Education money got cut so severely that LSU, the state’s flagship university, had to raise tuition by several thousand dollars a year.
In the end, voters in reliably Republican Louisiana became so disenchanted that they elected a Democratic successor to Jindal.
Kansas is the other place where tax-cut orthodoxy so far has been a failure. In 2012, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed cuts into law. Kansas reduced income tax and sales tax rates, and eliminated some business taxes. He said it was an experiment that would grow the economy.
So far, the experiment has flopped. The state has brought in less tax revenue than expected for 17 of the past 24 months, and some critics say the cuts made collections less consistent and more difficult to predict. Lawmakers in response have raised sales taxes and cigarette taxes, and even Republicans in the Kansas Legislature are dismayed at how difficult finances have become.
The lesson for the Mississippi Legislature should be obvious: Be careful.
It’s fine to talk about lower taxes and growing the economy, but there’s no guarantee of success, especially when the country is still struggling to recover from the 2008 crash..
